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12-07-2021
05:00 AM
This week we learn more about the new eBay finance program called eBay Seller Capital and Griff and Brian have a conversation with eBay sellers Craig Dawson, Shari Smith and Liz O’Kane about how they handle difficult customer situations.
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Episode (Show) Links:
eBay Acquires Sneaker Con
New Features For Promoted Listings Advanced
eBay Seller Capital
Seller Community Podcast
Recurring Links:
eBay for Business Podcast
eBay for Business Podcast Discussion Group
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
Community Chat with eBay Staff
eBay Seller Center
eBay Help
eBay Local Seller Events
Seller Hub
eBay Events
Devesh: "eBay's always looking for ways to help sellers grow their business and financing is a key enabler for that. So last year we partnered with Lending Point to help facilitate financing to sellers with business loans, working capital and lines of credit.”
Craig: "In any case, if I do get, which I rarely do, luckily enough, knock wood have a negative. I've only had I think one as well in the past year, past that my efforts go to selling some more stuff so that, that negative drops further down on the list. If somebody happens to look at my feedback and it doesn't show up as the number one thing, I just want to sell a five or six others and then if someone looks immediately at my feedback. The first thing they're going to see is amazing response, amazing packaging, exactly as described. Would buy from this guy again.”
Shari: "And my buyer, I refunded in full and said to keep them, or, or whatever he wanted to do that worked out. So I think the key is just to take a breath and chip away at it sometimes.
Liz: “Dealing with these difficult situations, it's really not worth my effort. I tend to sometimes use the phrase that I've heard from other people is, what lives rent-free in your head. And sometimes when we have difficult buyers, we let them live rent-free in our head when we could be making money with that brain space. That's the way I see it.”
Brian: I'm Brian.
Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source of information and inspiration. You need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This is episode 168. I don't know if you can tell it, but we're still back in the studio. It's great. Isn't it?
Brian: Hi Griff. It's nice to be in the studio.
Griff: Yeah, I have to admit, I look forward to it. I just had lunch with Audrey in the cafe.
Brian: How's Audrey?
Griff: Oh, she's great. She's having a great time.
Brian: When is she going to be back on the studio. She hasn't been on in a while.
Griff: She was on a few episodes ago. We did that social media series. She was on for three shows when we did that series.
Brian: That is right. Back-to-back-to-back.
Griff: We'll see. In 2022, I think we'll be able to rope her into some more stuff.
Brian: Strong arm her.
Griff: Yeah. Well, here we are. Back in the studio. You know, I try to put these podcasts together and give us some news items. Sometimes I don't have any, this week I found three really important news items. So you want to read them?
Brian: Yes, let's jump into news. E-bay recently announced the acquisition of the Sneaker Con Authentication business. The deal features eBay's vertical expansion strategy and sneakers and offers customers added confidence in the purchase of high value items. The acquisition is an extension of the ongoing collaboration between eBay Sneaker Con, which has been critical to powering eBay's Authenticity Guarantee. The service, which eBay launched in October, 2020 offers full vetting and verification of select sneakers bought on the marketplace by a team of Sneaker Cons Industry experts. Authenticity Guarantee has significantly changed the way people buy and sell sneakers on eBay as evidenced by quarter over quarter category growth. In just over a year, more than 1.55 million sneakers have been authenticated globally on eBay.
Griff: Geez, Where am I going to put them all?
Brian: I know! As Jordan Sweetnam said, eBay has always been a vibrant community of enthusiasts with deeply knowledgeable buyers, sellers, and employees. You can learn more about the acquisition on the eBay Inc blog page at eBay inc com.
Griff: I actually went through this with a pair of sneakers I bought.
Brian: You did?
Griff: Yeah, they were a, just over a hundred dollars. So they qualified and they came with a sticker and a tag.
Brian: The little tag is great looking.
Griff: I saved it. I want to save the little tag.
Brian: Some people keep them on the shoes, even when they wear them.
Griff: That's a great idea.
Brian: Cause then they can, you know, it's authentic.
Griff: Yeah. eBay said they're authentic.
Brian: Exactly.
Griff: What else is in the news, Brian?
Brian: Well, just in time for the Holiday push, we're excited to announce these recently launched features to help you be more efficient and increase the likelihood of a sale with Promoted Listings Advanced Beta.
Griff: Uh, we want to have a segment about this.
Brian: We should have one.
Griff: I think in the next, it's coming up in the next few episodes we'll have a whole segment.
Brian: Okay. Cause there were some questions about the difference between what we call PLA Promoted Listings Advanced and Promoted Listings, the original one.
Griff: They're very different. Yeah. So what's the new features?
Brian: So some of the new features include monthly keyword search counts. The ability to download campaign reports in bulk, a new negative keyword tab and negative keyword counts, expanded keyword view area, listing count summary, and many more. Additional updates and enhancements are on the way over the next couple of weeks and months, you can learn more on the Announcement Board at announcements.ebay.com.
Griff: This is an interesting program. I know it's still in beta. I suspect that there are a lot of sellers out there. Some in our audience who might actually really benefit from this. It may not be for everyone.
Brian: Right. But it's also one of those things is nice. I think they built in a feature that allows you to put a cap on how much you're willing to spend on it. So that actually should allow sellers to test very easily. Like I can use these keywords. Oh, it ran up to the cap very fast and I didn't get any sales. Okay, clearly not the right keyword. And you're protecting yourself from how much you're spending.
Griff: And the reporting tools that we're adding to this more and more over the next few months and into next year are going to make a big difference in how effective your testing is because you'll be able to track it and we know how important tracking it is.
Brian: Yes, exactly. We'll be good to hear from that team on the podcast as well.
Griff: We'll have more information as the year rolls on, but please visit the Announcement Board.
Brian: And I'll encourage folks to subscribe to the Announcement Board because then we will push the information to you. You don't have to come visit it when we update posts, there's just a little drop-down menu under options. You can subscribe. And then when we add an announcement, you'll get it in your inbox.
Griff: You know what I feel guilty. I've never subscribed. I better do that. I mean, I think it's important to know what's going on, right? If you have a podcast.
Brian: Definitely.
Griff: Hey Brian, have you ever taken out a business loan?
Brian: I have not.
Griff: Really never?
Brian: I haven't.
Griff: I did once with that company Cabbage, I took it out and paid them back just to see what it'd be like. It was an interesting experience and there may be a good reason for you as an eBay seller. And it may be a good opportunity for an eBay business seller like yourself with growth aspirations, to consider a capital loan.
Griff: Ask any successful business, how they were able to achieve that success. And they're going to give you a whole list of various factors like hard work, ingenuity, being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. But one factor they almost all share in common is access to capital. Especially in the early days of their business. Access to affordable capital can help a new business build a stronger foundation on which to continue growing that business. Today we have with us from eBay Devesh Verma, Head of Seller Capital in North America and also Lee Chow Executive Vice President For Product at Lending Point. And they're here to talk about a new capital option for sellers, eBay Seller Capital. Gentlemen welcome.
Lee: Thank you Griff.
Devesh: Glad to be here.
Griff: So Dev what is eBay Seller Capital powered by Lending Point?
Devesh: eBay's always looking for ways to help sellers grow their business and financing is a key enabler for that. Example, sellers need capital for inventory and long term financing needs to grow their business. So last year we partnered with Lending Point to help facilitate financing to sellers with business loans, working capital and lines of credit. And we are looking to continuously expand the portfolio.
Griff: Who is, what is Lending Point?
Lee: We are a financial technology company. What most people refer to as FinTech with roots in helping both people and businesses with financing needs that are typically not served well by banks. Lending Point was formed in 2015, 7 years ago. And we've provided over $4 billion in loans to both individuals and small businesses. Today we have a variety of funding options and we continue to serve both consumers and small businesses alike. Small businesses could mean freelancers folks running a small business individually like a sole proprietor to larger businesses that are incorporated as well too.
Devesh: So at eBay, we recognize that we have variety of business sellers from entrepreneurs, merchants, and large merchants. A platform like Lending Point can seamlessly sell in one single application experience, a wide range of businesses. The Lending Point platform facilitates a range of financing products that are transparent and flexible. And that's what we liked about them.
Griff: How has the reception to eBay Seller Capital been from eBay sellers?
Lee: Since launching, we have and continue to listen very carefully to eBay sellers, to make sure we are getting a feedback and suggestions to continue to improve the program. We are maniacal about making the application process as simple and seamless as possible. We know that all folks don't have time, small business owners, they just don't have time. And we make an application process start to end, a lot of folks complete it in five minutes actually. So we are focused on customer self-service and automation, but that doesn't mean we don't understand the power of the human touch. We have knowledgeable customer service representatives based in our Atlanta headquarters, supporting sellers throughout the process and to answer questions at any point in time. At Lending Point we have over 4,905 star Trustpilot customer reviews, which is a Testament to our focus on customer service. And we continue to strive to provide best in class experience for our customers as well too.
Griff: Based on those reviews. What are eBay sellers saying to you about the program?
Lee: Sellers, they appreciate first and foremost, the speed, right? Same day approvals, depending on the seller's bank, our deposits for seller loan could be available as soon as the same day. Sellers like how our program offers loans up to 60 months as well for lower payments. Our philosophy is really a worry free approach and that includes no impact to personal credit when you apply and receive the loan. They're happy they have the option also to prepaid the loan or line of credit without any penalty at any point in time. So that's, you know, some key points that we've been hearing from our customers and from sellers on the program, Dev, what have you heard on your side?
Devesh: Pretty much same and one of the things that sellers love about the program is that there is no hidden fees, No origination fees, no early payback fees, no annual fees and absolutely no late fees. That's something that we were way particular about as we were setting up this program and sellers are loving it. We also heard that sellers wanted an option of a working capital loan with no interest, just one simple fee. So we launched a working capital fixed fee program with no interest back in March, 2021. The response has been strong already as a third of sellers are now choosing that option.
Griff: Yeah. That's not surprising. I mean, faced with having to pay an interest or a one-time fee. It's so much easier to calculate how much is this going to cost me? Oh, this fee. I think I can make that up easily in the profit margin that I'll be experiencing because of this loan. Is there anything else introduced on the program in addition to working capital?
Lee: Yes. I think back to November, 2020, we added lines of credit to the program for financing needs up to $150,000. Coming soon, we're launching a bank partner on the platform that will provide lines of credit starting at 6.99%.
Griff: Any chance we know who this bank partner is or is that still in wraps?
Lee: Everyone keep your eyes peeled. It's coming very soon.
Griff: Who is eligible for eBay Seller Capital Program?
Lee: The eBay Seller Capital Program is targeted to eBay business sellers who have been selling on eBay for six months or more and meet certain other criteria. It is an easy visual application process for everyone where you can access the link from eBay's site and you could be approved instantaneously. We have a white glove process as mentioned to assist sellers at every step of the way if you have questions to go through the application process as well too.
Griff: So I got to tell you from personal experience, whenever I'm offered a lot of choices, sometimes I have a hard time picking. And with more products being offered for this program, how would I, as a seller know which one to choose which product is going to be right for me, it really depends on the needs of each business. For example, if your business has a short-term need for money to buy inventory or advertising on the platform, then working capital fee-based loan is a good choice. With no ongoing interest and repayment in six or 12 months, it's a fast and flexible option for sellers to take advantage of new opportunities. Whereas if the business is looking for higher loan amounts for leasing a new office, starting up a new product line or funding salaries for new employees the program has business loans up to $500,000 and lines of credit up to one $150,000. And what we are also doing is through channels like this podcast, we are looking to share more information so that sellers can make that choice based on their specific need. And we make sure we bring products to meet each and every seller's need.
Griff: If I'm in the middle of the application process and I'm unsure, does the white glove touch to the process actually helped me? Will somebody help me figure it out then?
Lee: Yes. For sure. There is a toll free number if you want to call us and ask questions, not a problem at all.
Griff: So I'm looking forward to that 6.99% rate, but what are the rates that you charge now for eBay Seller Capital Program?
Devesh: The program currently offers rates from 9.9, 9% up to a max of 28.99%. And remember there's no origination fee, no application fee for that process. And as you mentioned, with the launch of a new bank partner coming very soon, we will have rates starting at 6.99% as well.
Griff: And as well, you have to be competitive in this business if you're an eBay seller. And that's also true if you're a FinTech, because there's a lot of other financing options out there in the marketplace. All though, I've got to tell you, I personally, I'm not experienced with a lot of them, but I hear from sellers. How does eBay Seller Capital differ from other financing options that eBay sellers might be looking for?
Lee: We find that businesses typically look to three main sources of financing for their business when they want to buy inventory or grow it. From credit cards, sometimes even their personal credit cards, bank loans, and other non traditional loans as well too, such as, you know, factoring.
Griff: Loans from your family.
Lee: And loans from your family as well too. How we're different from that process is first of all, credit impact. Most solutions will impact your personal credit when you apply. Again, our program does not impact personal credit to apply and receive the loan. We do understand our loans are used for business purposes. So therefore we don't impact your personal credit. On the repayment side, for working capital loans, we offer a single fixed fee with no interest. And then for business loans, we offer up to 60 months to repay. Again, with that 60 months, five years what this means is that it is a lower more affordable payment and the business can keep more cashflow for themselves on a month to month basis to manage their business as well too. And then a big piece of course of financing is periodic interest. Our business term loans have a transparent and fixed interest rate. And unlike credit cards, we do not charge interest on interest, right? Oftentimes what people will see on their credit card statements is that if they don't pay off the end of month bill on a credit card the interest for that month, they will get charged interest on top of that interest. We don't do that here at Lending Point. And then fees, no hidden fees. As Dev mentioned before, we're working closely with the eBay program to make this program fee free, no origination, no application, no early payback, no annual fees and no late fees as well too.
Griff: You know, you mentioned funding your business to a credit card. Lots of credit cards have things like annual fees. They charge interest on interest. It could be really difficult to figure it out and you may want to get out of that particular loan. If I'm a seller that has a loan, an existing loan or a credit card where I don't think I'm getting a great deal. Can I refinance that with eBay Seller Capital?
Lee: Yes for sure. So you can definitely use our loan to refinance other business loans and you can actually save your money. Once you receive the loan proceeds, simply pay off the other business loans and consolidate all your business financing needs onto this program for one easy payment.
Devesh: At eBay, we understand many sellers today have previously available financing from other lenders. And that's why it was important to give that option. And we know that with this program, we can offer better and potentially lower cost alternatives to our sellers. Like the 6.99% rate that we are coming up with soon.
Griff: What if I already have a lone with you or with anyone else and I'm not looking to pay it off, but I just need some more capital. If I'm a seller with an existing loan, can I get access to more capital for my business through eBay seller capital?
Lee: Yes, our refinancing program is available today for sellers who have a strong payment history with us. They may have the opportunity to opportunity to really take advantage of an offer to refinance their existing loan with us. And we actually have sellers doing that today already. And what this will do is it provides them more funding to run and grow their business, right? So let's say you borrow, you know, $10,000 and we've paid off a third of it. And now you want to up the amount of capital to run your business. We definitely have that program available for you.
Griff: How do interested sellers apply for eBay Seller Capital?
Devesh: There are a variety of ways for start, you can go to ebay.com/sellercapital and look at the various options of the different products. And then click on apply now and start the application. What you can also do is you can go to Seller Hub and under Seller Tools. There is an option for eBay Seller Capital, click on it, and that will take you to the landing page. We also send emails and other marketing messages to different sellers. As you come across that, and you have a need simply click on that email, and that will take you to these same landing pages where you can start your application.
Griff: Well, this is a lot of information to digest, but I'm going to go check it out myself. I may not be ready to take a loan from my own eBay seller business right now, but who knows in the future. And if you're a seller on eBay and you feel like the only thing hindering your growth right now is that you really could use some help in the way of capital. This could be a great option for you. Dev, Lee, thank you both for helping us out today. I really appreciate it.
Devesh: Thank you.
Lee: Thank you for inviting us back to the program.
Griff: We've been conversing with Devesh Verma, Head of Seller Capital in North America eBay and Lee Chow, Executive Vice President For Product at Lending Point. And we've been talking about eBay's new seller loan program called eBay Seller Capital. We'll put the links to eBay Seller Capital as we always do in the transcript for episode 168.
Griff: Brian, last week I sold something and I ended up having a little bit of a skirmish with a buyer. It was kind of shocking.
Brian: Did they not like the item that you sent them?
Griff: No, they hated it.
Brian: You sent them an item, didn't you?
Griff: I did. But it was worse than that. They told me I was a crook and I was a fraud because I tampered with it.
Brian: What's happened to you?
Griff: I've become desperate. ( laughter).
Brian: Tell me what happened.
Griff: Well, I won't give you any details, cause I don't think it's fair to the buyer. I don't hate the buyer. I just thought this is an unusual situation. I wasn't expecting it, but while it was happening, I kept thinking, okay, put on your eBay Podcast hat, your eBay Griff hat. How would you handle this? And I gotta tell you it's not easy being called a crook. I think I handled it pretty well, but when it was all over, I said, I wonder if this might be a subject we should talk about. So I called a few sellers and they agreed to come onto the podcast and talk about how they'd handled, and I'm calling them difficult customer situations so that we're not focusing on a difficult customer. And joining us for the first of our sellers is our good friend from north of the border. Craig Dawson. Hey Craig.
Craig: Hello Griff.
Brian: Griff The Crook.
Griff: No, no, please. Let's not focus on that. It's too much for me. Really, I'll break out in a sweat.
Craig: But we are adding a T to your name now. It is Griff-T.
Griff: Oh, that's good. Oh no. This is gonna stick. Thanks Craig. (laughter) Anyway, I know from previous conversations that you have had a few difficult situations with customers and I wondered how you handled them. You said you might be willing to talk and give some advice about this.
Craig: Oh sure. I will actually tell you when that happened literally 20 minutes ago. I had an item listed on eBay and I actually originally was selling it with free shipping. I put in the title that I had this item with free shipping. Well, it's been a year and I wanted to get rid of a couple of them. I still had some in stock before Christmas so I lowered the price and I added shipping, but I forgot to actually take free shipping off the title.
Griff: Ohhh.
Craig: So it said, here's this item with free shipping. It sold last night and I saw this morning when I woke up, I was like, oh, oh, it's free shipping. Why is there, why did they pay so much? And I realized that, oh geez, it says it in the title, but they got charged shipping cause I don't offer it anymore. So I sent this person a message and said, I'm terribly, sorry, this is my fault. Is it okay if I refund you the shipping and they just responded with no, you're not refunding me the shipping, I'm fine paying it. So tell me when you hear that kind of story. Never.
Brian: I wonder if it was a repeat buyer. Someone who has had good experiences with you in the past.
Craig: I don't know if it's a repeat buyer. They didn't use a coupon of mine, but I don't know, but it's still just the idea that somebody would actually, I'm offering them the shipping, my mistake as a seller. And they went, no, no that's okay, I understand. Maybe they're a seller. Maybe they've done the same mistake, but so there's thousands of amazing millions of great transactions. And actually, we probably can count on both hands how many difficult customer situations we've had. We've had a couple actually though in the past few months and they're all sort of different. So one of them I'm going to tell you about was a customer that we had back in October and they actually bought a Christmas item. But the problem they had was they did not update their address in eBay and they moved. Now, they moved 16 minutes away from where they were and their address was registered as a hotel. So I guess they were staying in a hotel part-time until they could find a place to live, but they didn't update their address in eBay. Well, they complained, they sent me a message and said, where's my package?. And I said, well, your package was delivered. And they said, oh, that's a hotel. I don't live there. But that's your address in eBay. And they said, well, you need to contact the hotel and you need to get the package back or refund my money. And I said, well, and again, I think the key thing that I would say with any of these kinds of things, anytime you have a difficult situation, number one. Before I go into any more of these, You've got your phone on. Answer anything within the first 12 hours after you get it. When you get up in the morning, if you see something in there, that's a return request or anything like that, the first thing you do is send them a quick message. It doesn't have to be detailed. It can be like a very simple sorry, let me look into this and I'll get back to you and then follow up with it. But don't make the customer wait, cause you as a customer, think if you flip the hat. If you were the buyer and nobody responded for you for 48 hours, you'd start getting more and more mad. So that's my first thing is to immediately respond to them. I did respond and this actually went back for a couple of days and I looked up the hotel. The hotel literally was 15 minutes from where this person lived.
Griff: They could just drive and get it!
Craig: Exactly. And I said, I haven't got it returned. It's been accepted. It's probably sitting waiting for you at the hotel. You lived there. Nothing for another 10 days then I don't know if you saw my last message, but I still haven't got this item and I don't live there. It's like, well, yes, if you read through what I sent you the last time, I suggested that maybe you go by the hotel to check. Another week and a half later, where's my package? I want a refund. You're trying to rip me off. And I just literally said, I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. Unless I have a return receipt coming from the hotel. If it was delivered and accepted by USPS, it is at that space. If someone stole it from you there, that is not my issue. I'm terribly, sorry. You'll have to file with eBay. But I knew from a seller's perspective, I'm covered. I have USPS tracking fully delivered to this place. And that eBay would cover me as a buyer or as a seller in this case. But that was one where it's like every week or 10 days, I was getting another sort of aggressive why haven't you gone to this hotel, that's 10 minutes from where I live?
Griff: Because I have a house to live in. I'm not moving.
Craig: Like, yeah. I was like, where are you? It's like, you're like 10 minutes away in the south shore of Jersey or something like that. And I'm like in Canada, I'm going to just drive. Like, I don't know. So sometimes it's just trying to re-explain without getting into as my husband, Rick, when he does a response, he writes like he's writing an explanation for the government on how to do something. It's like 18 pages long. And at the end of it, I go, what was this email about? Try to be succinct, but try to be very factual. Try to step out of it, reread it before you send it, things like that in your messages. So that was one that was a weird sort of difficult customer situation. But was one, I couldn't control.
Griff: Have you ever lost your cool?
Craig: Every one of them, I lose my cool. I just don't type it to the person.
Griff: Yeah. I said a few choice things to Rob at dinner that night about it while we were watching TV, I said, oh, you won't believe. And I let loose, but it's stuff that I would never, ever put into an email.
Craig: This was like a $200 so I can understand why they were like, oh my God, where is this? Why didn't I get it? And it's like, well again. And actually when we looked even four and a half weeks later, they had still not updated their address in eBay. So I even said to them, you better update your address before you buy anything else. Like, here's one of the ones that I literally turned to Rick and said, what the F is going on with this person's brain? We sell everything under the sun. So we’re random. We are thrifters and resells so we search at every place we can from garage sales to estate sales, to other online auctions, you name it. And I happened to find a bag full of doll eyeballs. Yes, doll replacement doll eyes with eyelashes on them. So if you made dolls, you could make them have eyes. I got this whole bag of like 50 pairs of eyeballs for like $4 and I was selling them for $10 each. This person got a pair and then said, this doesn't fit my doll. I said, oh, I'm terribly sorry. I tell you what, just throw them out. Here's a full refund because I didn't want to pay for shipping back. Cause I offer free shipping. So it was free shipping down to them. And free shipping back to me would have been a waste of time. So I give them their money back. And this was the, what the hell moment. I got neutral feedback from them saying something to the degree of, I bought the wrong size eyeballs and he couldn't measure the correct size for my doll. I couldn't far, far away from them measure that person's doll eyeballs.
Griff: Did you respond?
Craig: No.
Griff: Yeah. I don't think I would have either. It speaks for itself.
Brian: I think buyers who read that would understand.
Craig: I actually, I'm trying to think. I might've responded with, unfortunately we had only one size available, like something like that, but again, I didn't get emotional in that side of thing,
Brian: Smart not to get emotional. The other thing that I've done is I've typed messages, but I've not put anything in the to because I don't want to inadvertently send. Cause then I get the feeling out of writing the email, but then I actually don't send it.
Griff: I used to do that too, but then I thought that was risky. So now I just locked myself in the bathroom and scream at the mirror and it works!
Craig: Well, Like, what I just said, Rick and I have that. One of our worst ones was a couple of years ago actually before COVID and this was one of those ones and I think a lot of sellers actually have this happen to them. You start getting sort of this little feeling because the questions before the purchase are just starting to get either very weird. It's like, okay, sorry, this is not, that's a different kink channel on YouTube. This is not where you are right now. Or they just start asking things. And it just seems to be like pushy or so this one person actually came down. This was actually a singing Christmas tree that I had. It's a Douglas fir singing Christmas tree or animatronic trees. They sell really well on eBay. And I had one that I was selling and this person, it was brand new. Still had it wrapped, never touched anything like that. And this person sent me offer and then a message with another offer and didn't send offers, offers, but kept sending me messages to lower the price. And some of them came within three or four minutes of each other, like, would you take 100? Would you take 90? Would you take?.. And then at one point it was like, what'd you take 95? And I'm like, what does he do? I was literally saying, and then on top of that, there were, does this work, are you sure that it works? Are you sure that it's new? Are you sure that it's never been used before? Have you tested it? And I'm answering all of these questions and then out of the blue it sells! I'm like, oh, thank God. I don't have to deal with that person, it sold for full price to that person. And I was like, oh God. This was like way under the, like way over the price you've been offering. And I was like, okay, well, the next thing was a message saying, so I better have this by Saturday. This was Wednesday. And I was like, okay, first of all, you didn't choose expedited shipping. hat's like courier overnight, practically because it's Wednesday night. You want something by Saturday. There's no way I can get it to you from Thursday to Friday in time. And he just started arguing with me in messages that I should be able to do this and he's bought it. I actually ended up saying, I'm sorry, I'm canceling this order because you're demanding things from me that I can't fulfill as a seller. And I never promised you that I would fulfill them. And I canceled by using problem with address because that really was what it was. It was problem with trying to do an expedited address. And I got a negative feedback from him and I didn't follow up with eBay, which I did talk to someone about a year later. And they said, you should have, because you would have had that specific one removed. But yeah, his negative feedback was right on that cusp of calling me like a liar and a cheat and trying to rip him off. The one thing I always say is if you do have negative feedback or anything like that, the one thing you should not do is do not respond to it before you actually have spoken to eBay. If you want to have it challenged or anything like that. Cause that's the one thing, if you've responded to it, then you've responded. So eBay doesn't really need to handle the fact that you've already given a response. Like don't fight it there. And I actually did respond to it somewhat nicely. I don't remember. It was my one negative too for like, that's the only thing that bugs me. It sat there for 365 days. I kept saying there's one negative, one negative. And it kept moving and moving and moving.
Brian: The one part of that, that story though, that is interesting. Like sellers worry so much about getting that negative and you know, it clearly didn't have an impact on your sales and your perspective on selling on eBay and all the rest of it is good.
Craig: Not at all. In fact, in any case, if I do get, which I rarely do, luckily enough knock would have a negative. I've only had I think one as well in the past year past that is my efforts go to selling some more stuff. So that, that negative drops further down on the list. If somebody happens to look at my feedback and it doesn't show up as the number one thing, I just want to sell five or six others. And then if someone looks immediately at my feedback, the first thing they're going to see is amazing response, amazing packaging, exactly as described, would buy from this guy again, like all that sort of stuff. And that one buried in there in 6,000 plus feedbacks that says he's a liar and a cheat. And I think Griff is teaching him how to sell. (laughter)
Craig: I resemble that remark! (laughter) Well, Craig, it's always a pleasure, but I want to thank you again. You really helped make the podcast lively. I really appreciate that. Great advice too. And great stories.
Griff: No problem. Thanks so much for having me. I'm always, always there for chit chatting around on eBay. My favorite Sally had a great weekend.
Craig: Thank you so much and happy Holidays!
Griff: Our best to Rick as well.
Craig: Take care.
Griff: Well, that was great. Well, now I think it's time now to talk to Shari Smith. Hi Sherry. How are you?
Shari: Hi friend!
Griff: You agreed to talk to us about a topic that I found interesting. And I already explained to Craig who we just spoke to, what the situation was basically I had a buyer that just called me a crook. So they found me out. It's really terrible.
Shari: Terrible, but it took a while though it took years well.
Griff: I thought to myself, I'm going to talk to some of our sellers and find out how they handle difficult customer situations. So have you had difficult customer situations in the past?
Shari: Yes, I have. You know, I haven't had one for a long time.
Griff: Oh that is good.
Shari: Yes. It really is good because I mean, situations come up like an international buyer recently didn't get his package. The tracking just stopped showing any information as of like two weeks prior to his message, I added the tracking, but then I called eBay to find out what I should do because he's being reasonable. I mean, he's just asking what's going on. And just because I have tracking, he hasn't received the package. I let him know that I had talked to eBay and that I can file a claim with eBay Standard International Delivery after a certain period of time. Because I think it's 30 days. I told him that I put it in my calendar to file a claim on the day that I could. And he contacted me a couple of days before that and wanted to know what was going on. And I said, it is okay if you open a request because I'm also following up on this because I didn't want his request time to expire. Now this is a very reasonable person. Who's not calling me names or anything. And what turned out is he never did get the package. And when I filed the claim, I got reimbursed pretty quickly by eBay Standard International Delivery. And I refunded him. So that's how that all went down. Of course, it's all about communication/ Occasionally, on a rare occasion, you get a buyer that's calling me names like I'm committing fraud and...
Brian: or like crook.
Griff: Yeah, Crook is a word that came up earlier today.
Shari: Yes, And what's really great about eBay is that the communication is with, you know, your hands and not your mouth. I can just contain myself, think about what I want to type and, you know, answer them as if they haven't called me a crook or a fraud. That case, the person said the garment smelled like smoke. So I don't smoke. I do sell on consignment. I didn't notice it smelled like smoke. And I probably really would have. I said, I'm so sorry. You know, I sell on consignment, but I don't sell anything that smells like smoke, but I'm really sorry that it did. Um, if you open a return with eBay, I have free returns, it will issue you a return label, prepaid return label, and I'll issue you a refund upon receipt. And she said, I can't even bring it in my house. It's going to make me sick. And I can't believe that you're making me, you know, have to go near it or send it back. And I said, I'm really sorry. This is, of course after I think about things and try to say things in the nicest way possible, but I will issue you a refund and I'll pay return shipping. I don't know if you can get your post carrier to pick it up at your house so you don't have to touch it. You know, maybe you could just apply the label and stick it on the, on the porch. So the answer to how I handle buyer conflicts is to really, and not to patronize them either, but to really say, well, I'm so sorry. I'll always offer a refund upon return and I have free returns. Okay. So I had a guy who bought 60 pound speakers from me and each speaker was 60 pounds. Oh my gosh, they were beasts. And they cost like $75 each to ship them to him. And he said that the tweeter was damaged. And so, yeah, it just wouldn't tweet. And um, he sent me pictures now, meanwhile one's okay. And for me to pay return, shipping is going to cost me $150. So I asked for pictures of the damage, which was really hard to discern in a picture. It was really hard to make out that it was damaged and the condition of the box and pictures of the box. And I submitted a claim to FedEx and they were not responding for a long time. And it's kind of impossible to contact them and talk to someone in claims. I kind of made that my life's goal. And I talked to people that I said, will you please convey this to your claims department? Because of the notes that they put was that there was no visible damage on the box. And I said, oh, then they're probably not going to honor this. I said, please send them this picture. There is a hole. You can see it. And it's a damage on the outside of the box. Well, FedEx ended up honoring the claim after this whole shenanigans and my buyer, I refunded in full and said to keep them or, or whatever you wanted to do that worked out. I think the key is just kind of to take a breath and chip away at it sometimes.
Griff: Well, Shari, this has been great. I'm glad you agreed to talk to us.
Shari: Thank you so much.
Brian: Have a wonderful weekend, Shari.
Shari: Okay. Thank you. Bye guys.
Griff: Well, that was great. I haven't talked to Sherry since she was here at one of our new employee orientations. A long time ago, two plus years ago.
Brian: Since you've spoken to her? Oh wow.
Griff: Our next seller is a, another seller from Colorado. Please welcome a regular guest and contributor to the podcast has a podcast of our own with our ex colleague Doug Smith. It's the seller community or community, right Liz? What is it called? Sorry.
Brian: Well, we say what? Let's welcome, Liz.O'Kane.
Griff: Okay, well let's welcome Liz. O'Kane. Hi, Liz. Hi.
Liz: Thank you for having me back.
Griff: Tell us the real name of your podcast. I am sorry. I messed it up.
Liz: I am cohost of The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly.
Griff: I want to thank you for joining us today or agreeing to join us. This is a fun topic for sellers. I think as I told you earlier, I had my own situation this week. I want to find out how you handle difficult customer situations. And if you've had one recently?
Liz: Oh goodness. If you've been a seller for any more than about three months, you have probably faced something that may seem difficult to you. You know, I think the last five years I tend to not buy into difficult buyers.
Griff: What do you mean not buy into?
Liz: So what I tend to do is, I can find a situation where a buyer can be demanding or ugly or mean or upset, which in turn as a seller, you know, we automatically, oh my gosh, this is the end of the world. This is a horrible, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. And that could be. I've learned over the years to kind of not take it personally, treating my business more like a business. And what I found with difficult situations or a buyer that is upset, I have found that when I come across buyers that are not happy with their purchase, whether it's justified or not, it is easier for me to say you're right, send it back. I'm sorry about that. Let's take care of it for you. That happens. And it works to my favor in almost all situations now. I found that when I do that, I'm able to save myself time and able to save myself a little bit of sanity. For example, I can think back of a time when I probably didn't handle situations the right way.
Griff: Oh let's talk about those.
Liz: I can't think of the specific scenario, but I remember it was Christmas probably five years ago, six years ago. Somebody purchased something and they thought they were getting two of the item, which blew my mind because it was a picture of one item. It says, you will receive one item. This is a single item. It was a pillow, sham. Not a pair, just one. And they were so upset and they emailed me or they message me via eBay Messenger. About 10 times on Christmas Eve. This is ridiculous. You’re crazy. I mean, I can't remember the exact, but I remember Christmas Eve going, this is nuts. And I found myself getting worked up. I'm like, this is Christmas Eve, over a $30 pillow sham. Come on. You know? But at the time it upset me. It was Christmas time. It wasn't about the money. It was about this listing is totally clear. I waited, emailed them the next day and we went back and forth. I'm like, no, it's one, no, it's this. It all worked out in the end. I believe the buyers sent it back. They got their money back hindsight, fast forward, five years later, if that were to happen today, I'd be like, you're right. Send it back.
Griff: Just cut right to the chase.
Liz: Right? If it were to happen, Christmas Eve. So sorry about that. Have a great evening. Send it back when you get a chance. What I found is dealing with these difficult situations, it's really not worth my effort to do the back and forth. I tend to sometimes use the phrase that I've heard from other people is, what lives rent-free in your head? And sometimes when we have difficult buyers, we let them live rent-free in our head when we could be making money with that brain space. That's the way I see it.
Griff: Don't let them squat in your brain.
Liz: No and especially on Christmas Eve.
Griff: Then you will never get rid of them.
Liz: Exactly. Now don't get me wrong. I am human. I'm not going to go back and forth with a customer nowadays. What I can do is I have a great group of reseller friends, screenshot it, send it to, can you believe this? This is ridiculous. You vent, you laugh about it and you just move on.
Brian: It is kind of that catharsis that you get by sending it to everybody else.
Griff: Look what this person did call me a crook. I don't believe it.
Liz: Right. You know? And then there's that human element of it to where there's some times it does upset you, you think of a witty response or something, a response to a totally unreasonable message that you may receive. But again, at the end of the day, you don't send it. I have found when I made that switch to be from Liz, the person selling something on eBay to Colorado Reworn the business and treated it those two different ways. It's really helped me again, not let that transaction or that customer live rent free in my head. And I can just move on.
Griff: To the next transaction.
Liz: Absolutely. Is it going to cost me a couple of dollars? Yes. How many of these do I actually deal with the year? Maybe one or two?
Griff: That's a good point. I've only had one in so long. I feel better already. That's why I did this segment really was just to get therapy for my friends. I felt so bad that night. I looked at my dogs and I said, you guys might want to sleep in the other room. I don't think you want to sleep with a crook.
Liz: You know and that's the thing, we're human. And we joke about it and, and we look at it. But at the end of the day, it really is about customer service. I've had customers come at me. I can think of one. I sent a customer, a pair of shorts and they were First Class. They arrived. I mean, it looked like the UPS truck drove over. It backed up, drove over it again. It was just one of those crazy things that happened with this package. He was absolutely upset. Sent me a two paragraph novel of why I was a horrible seller and I should have triple bagged it and I should have put it in a box. So it was First Class. It wasn't a high value item. I didn't have it insured. And at the end of the day, I'm responsible for getting that person the item, did it stink? Was I out that money? Yeah. I happened to have a replacement, same exact item instead of arguing back, like I know how to package my items. I've been doing this for 20 years. You don't know what you're talking about. It's not my fault the UPS driver ran it over. You're ridiculous. No. Would you like another pair? Would you like a refund? He's like, well, I mean, it wasn't really your fault, you know, maybe like a 50% refund and I could maybe wash them? I was like, don't worry about it. I'll just send you a new pair. Keep both. And in my mind it wasn't a huge loss and I sold many variations of this item. These pair of shorts in my mind, he might be happy enough to come back when he wants another pair.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. He had a good experience ultimately, right.
Griff: Where as you called him on the carpet and even insinuated that he was an idiot. He might not come back unless he has a glutton for punishment, kind of like me.
Brian: And you move much more quickly on to helping another customer who might have an issue or listing another item or sourcing inventory. The number of times I've had conversations with sellers who don't have your perspective. And I think, man, it's, been three months and it's still taking up time and energy. Since they're talking to me about it.
Griff: They'd given this difficult situation, headspace rent-free.
Liz: Yes. I may have had that conversation with you six years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, maybe before I kind of changed my way of thinking, you know, am I going to let this get to me? Or am I going to move on? Do some of these returns hurt and sting and affect your bottom line? Yes they can. And I get that. And every situation is different. I'm talking about a pillow sham from five years ago because I really can't think of a bad experience.
Griff: It's not that you've been on this for all these years.
Liz: Right. I'm sitting here trying to think.
Griff: Arrgh...Slowly I turned, step by step!
Brian: Will that be an episode, the pillow sham?
Griff: I'll tell you what, I'll leave that to you and Doug.
Liz: That was an ongoing joke between me and my friends for awhile. It was the sham.
Griff: Which is another word for, crook right? Yeah. There you go.
Liz: So that kind of played in well, but I may have had instances since then, but I don't let it get to me like I did then, because I spent three days dealing with this over the holidays when I could have just been here's your money, bye. And gotten on with listing 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 more things and just ending it.
Griff: Well, Liz, this has been excellent therapy for me. And hope it proves to be interesting to our sellers. Continued success with the podcast, by the way, tell people where they can find it.
Liz: Yes, you can find the seller community podcast anywhere you stream podcasts, Apple, Spotify, and more. We hope you'll tune in and listen, we talk about all things reselling.
Griff: And we'll put a link to the podcast in our series of links that we do every episode.
Brian: And I, and I just realized, you know, we should've been a little bit more observant. We wouldn't have had to try and guess the name of the podcast earlier because it's actually on her sweatshirt.
Griff: Oh, there it is. We are idiots.
Liz: I am always advertising.
Griff: You know, I fall back on the fact that I'm older now, just my Swiss cheese brain.
Liz: I'm hiding behind the microphone .
Griff: Hiding behind it. That's great. Well, Liz, thank you so much our best to Doug and continued success. And thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. It's been helpful. I think for all of us, myself included.
Liz: Thank you, Griff and thank you Brian.
Brian: Do we have questions?
Griff: Well, Brian, normally we do cause that's, this is the spot where we say you got questions, we got answers, but we're saving all of the questions that we have for the next episode, because there's no time this week. We really, I didn't really think about it and think about how having three sellers on might take up a lot of time. And a lot of what our sellers said. I don't want to edit out super valuable. It may be the first show in a while that's over an hour.
Brian: So that's a pretty full show for this week. Yeah. So then next week we'll have some questions. And in the meantime, if you have a question about selling on eBay or running a business, call us at (888) 723-4630.
Griff: Let me repeat that. (888) 723-4630. Call that hotline anytime of the day, any day of the week, just leave a question or comment on the voice line. And we might just put your question on the air, or if you're interested, leave a message saying as much we might put you on the air as a guest, we can have you on live.
Brian: What, is that you? You're not a call on the phone person.
Griff: I'm not.
Brian: No problem for you. You can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: Now it's time for your daily Podcast To Do List. Before we sign off...
Brian: Check the Announcement Board for up-to-date Seller News.
Griff: A little extra capital, my boost your business. You know what I mean? One thing I could think you could invest in is the thermal printer so there is always that.
Brian: There is always that. Check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced in the episode.
Griff: We would like again, to thank our guests this week, Devesh Verma Head Of Seller Capital North America and Lee Chow Executive Vice President For Product at Lending Point.
Brian: And eBay sellers, Liz O' Kane, Shari Smith, and Craig Dawson.
Griff: eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
Craig: "In any case, if I do get, which I rarely do, luckily enough, knock wood have a negative. I've only had I think one as well in the past year, past that my efforts go to selling some more stuff so that, that negative drops further down on the list. If somebody happens to look at my feedback and it doesn't show up as the number one thing, I just want to sell a five or six others and then if someone looks immediately at my feedback. The first thing they're going to see is amazing response, amazing packaging, exactly as described. Would buy from this guy again.”
Shari: "And my buyer, I refunded in full and said to keep them, or, or whatever he wanted to do that worked out. So I think the key is just to take a breath and chip away at it sometimes.
Liz: “Dealing with these difficult situations, it's really not worth my effort. I tend to sometimes use the phrase that I've heard from other people is, what lives rent-free in your head. And sometimes when we have difficult buyers, we let them live rent-free in our head when we could be making money with that brain space. That's the way I see it.”
Brian: I'm Brian.
Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source of information and inspiration. You need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This is episode 168. I don't know if you can tell it, but we're still back in the studio. It's great. Isn't it?
Brian: Hi Griff. It's nice to be in the studio.
Griff: Yeah, I have to admit, I look forward to it. I just had lunch with Audrey in the cafe.
Brian: How's Audrey?
Griff: Oh, she's great. She's having a great time.
Brian: When is she going to be back on the studio. She hasn't been on in a while.
Griff: She was on a few episodes ago. We did that social media series. She was on for three shows when we did that series.
Brian: That is right. Back-to-back-to-back.
Griff: We'll see. In 2022, I think we'll be able to rope her into some more stuff.
Brian: Strong arm her.
Griff: Yeah. Well, here we are. Back in the studio. You know, I try to put these podcasts together and give us some news items. Sometimes I don't have any, this week I found three really important news items. So you want to read them?
Brian: Yes, let's jump into news. E-bay recently announced the acquisition of the Sneaker Con Authentication business. The deal features eBay's vertical expansion strategy and sneakers and offers customers added confidence in the purchase of high value items. The acquisition is an extension of the ongoing collaboration between eBay Sneaker Con, which has been critical to powering eBay's Authenticity Guarantee. The service, which eBay launched in October, 2020 offers full vetting and verification of select sneakers bought on the marketplace by a team of Sneaker Cons Industry experts. Authenticity Guarantee has significantly changed the way people buy and sell sneakers on eBay as evidenced by quarter over quarter category growth. In just over a year, more than 1.55 million sneakers have been authenticated globally on eBay.
Griff: Geez, Where am I going to put them all?
Brian: I know! As Jordan Sweetnam said, eBay has always been a vibrant community of enthusiasts with deeply knowledgeable buyers, sellers, and employees. You can learn more about the acquisition on the eBay Inc blog page at eBay inc com.
Griff: I actually went through this with a pair of sneakers I bought.
Brian: You did?
Griff: Yeah, they were a, just over a hundred dollars. So they qualified and they came with a sticker and a tag.
Brian: The little tag is great looking.
Griff: I saved it. I want to save the little tag.
Brian: Some people keep them on the shoes, even when they wear them.
Griff: That's a great idea.
Brian: Cause then they can, you know, it's authentic.
Griff: Yeah. eBay said they're authentic.
Brian: Exactly.
Griff: What else is in the news, Brian?
Brian: Well, just in time for the Holiday push, we're excited to announce these recently launched features to help you be more efficient and increase the likelihood of a sale with Promoted Listings Advanced Beta.
Griff: Uh, we want to have a segment about this.
Brian: We should have one.
Griff: I think in the next, it's coming up in the next few episodes we'll have a whole segment.
Brian: Okay. Cause there were some questions about the difference between what we call PLA Promoted Listings Advanced and Promoted Listings, the original one.
Griff: They're very different. Yeah. So what's the new features?
Brian: So some of the new features include monthly keyword search counts. The ability to download campaign reports in bulk, a new negative keyword tab and negative keyword counts, expanded keyword view area, listing count summary, and many more. Additional updates and enhancements are on the way over the next couple of weeks and months, you can learn more on the Announcement Board at announcements.ebay.com.
Griff: This is an interesting program. I know it's still in beta. I suspect that there are a lot of sellers out there. Some in our audience who might actually really benefit from this. It may not be for everyone.
Brian: Right. But it's also one of those things is nice. I think they built in a feature that allows you to put a cap on how much you're willing to spend on it. So that actually should allow sellers to test very easily. Like I can use these keywords. Oh, it ran up to the cap very fast and I didn't get any sales. Okay, clearly not the right keyword. And you're protecting yourself from how much you're spending.
Griff: And the reporting tools that we're adding to this more and more over the next few months and into next year are going to make a big difference in how effective your testing is because you'll be able to track it and we know how important tracking it is.
Brian: Yes, exactly. We'll be good to hear from that team on the podcast as well.
Griff: We'll have more information as the year rolls on, but please visit the Announcement Board.
Brian: And I'll encourage folks to subscribe to the Announcement Board because then we will push the information to you. You don't have to come visit it when we update posts, there's just a little drop-down menu under options. You can subscribe. And then when we add an announcement, you'll get it in your inbox.
Griff: You know what I feel guilty. I've never subscribed. I better do that. I mean, I think it's important to know what's going on, right? If you have a podcast.
Brian: Definitely.
Griff: Hey Brian, have you ever taken out a business loan?
Brian: I have not.
Griff: Really never?
Brian: I haven't.
Griff: I did once with that company Cabbage, I took it out and paid them back just to see what it'd be like. It was an interesting experience and there may be a good reason for you as an eBay seller. And it may be a good opportunity for an eBay business seller like yourself with growth aspirations, to consider a capital loan.
Griff: Ask any successful business, how they were able to achieve that success. And they're going to give you a whole list of various factors like hard work, ingenuity, being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. But one factor they almost all share in common is access to capital. Especially in the early days of their business. Access to affordable capital can help a new business build a stronger foundation on which to continue growing that business. Today we have with us from eBay Devesh Verma, Head of Seller Capital in North America and also Lee Chow Executive Vice President For Product at Lending Point. And they're here to talk about a new capital option for sellers, eBay Seller Capital. Gentlemen welcome.
Lee: Thank you Griff.
Devesh: Glad to be here.
Griff: So Dev what is eBay Seller Capital powered by Lending Point?
Devesh: eBay's always looking for ways to help sellers grow their business and financing is a key enabler for that. Example, sellers need capital for inventory and long term financing needs to grow their business. So last year we partnered with Lending Point to help facilitate financing to sellers with business loans, working capital and lines of credit. And we are looking to continuously expand the portfolio.
Griff: Who is, what is Lending Point?
Lee: We are a financial technology company. What most people refer to as FinTech with roots in helping both people and businesses with financing needs that are typically not served well by banks. Lending Point was formed in 2015, 7 years ago. And we've provided over $4 billion in loans to both individuals and small businesses. Today we have a variety of funding options and we continue to serve both consumers and small businesses alike. Small businesses could mean freelancers folks running a small business individually like a sole proprietor to larger businesses that are incorporated as well too.
Devesh: So at eBay, we recognize that we have variety of business sellers from entrepreneurs, merchants, and large merchants. A platform like Lending Point can seamlessly sell in one single application experience, a wide range of businesses. The Lending Point platform facilitates a range of financing products that are transparent and flexible. And that's what we liked about them.
Griff: How has the reception to eBay Seller Capital been from eBay sellers?
Lee: Since launching, we have and continue to listen very carefully to eBay sellers, to make sure we are getting a feedback and suggestions to continue to improve the program. We are maniacal about making the application process as simple and seamless as possible. We know that all folks don't have time, small business owners, they just don't have time. And we make an application process start to end, a lot of folks complete it in five minutes actually. So we are focused on customer self-service and automation, but that doesn't mean we don't understand the power of the human touch. We have knowledgeable customer service representatives based in our Atlanta headquarters, supporting sellers throughout the process and to answer questions at any point in time. At Lending Point we have over 4,905 star Trustpilot customer reviews, which is a Testament to our focus on customer service. And we continue to strive to provide best in class experience for our customers as well too.
Griff: Based on those reviews. What are eBay sellers saying to you about the program?
Lee: Sellers, they appreciate first and foremost, the speed, right? Same day approvals, depending on the seller's bank, our deposits for seller loan could be available as soon as the same day. Sellers like how our program offers loans up to 60 months as well for lower payments. Our philosophy is really a worry free approach and that includes no impact to personal credit when you apply and receive the loan. They're happy they have the option also to prepaid the loan or line of credit without any penalty at any point in time. So that's, you know, some key points that we've been hearing from our customers and from sellers on the program, Dev, what have you heard on your side?
Devesh: Pretty much same and one of the things that sellers love about the program is that there is no hidden fees, No origination fees, no early payback fees, no annual fees and absolutely no late fees. That's something that we were way particular about as we were setting up this program and sellers are loving it. We also heard that sellers wanted an option of a working capital loan with no interest, just one simple fee. So we launched a working capital fixed fee program with no interest back in March, 2021. The response has been strong already as a third of sellers are now choosing that option.
Griff: Yeah. That's not surprising. I mean, faced with having to pay an interest or a one-time fee. It's so much easier to calculate how much is this going to cost me? Oh, this fee. I think I can make that up easily in the profit margin that I'll be experiencing because of this loan. Is there anything else introduced on the program in addition to working capital?
Lee: Yes. I think back to November, 2020, we added lines of credit to the program for financing needs up to $150,000. Coming soon, we're launching a bank partner on the platform that will provide lines of credit starting at 6.99%.
Griff: Any chance we know who this bank partner is or is that still in wraps?
Lee: Everyone keep your eyes peeled. It's coming very soon.
Griff: Who is eligible for eBay Seller Capital Program?
Lee: The eBay Seller Capital Program is targeted to eBay business sellers who have been selling on eBay for six months or more and meet certain other criteria. It is an easy visual application process for everyone where you can access the link from eBay's site and you could be approved instantaneously. We have a white glove process as mentioned to assist sellers at every step of the way if you have questions to go through the application process as well too.
Griff: So I got to tell you from personal experience, whenever I'm offered a lot of choices, sometimes I have a hard time picking. And with more products being offered for this program, how would I, as a seller know which one to choose which product is going to be right for me, it really depends on the needs of each business. For example, if your business has a short-term need for money to buy inventory or advertising on the platform, then working capital fee-based loan is a good choice. With no ongoing interest and repayment in six or 12 months, it's a fast and flexible option for sellers to take advantage of new opportunities. Whereas if the business is looking for higher loan amounts for leasing a new office, starting up a new product line or funding salaries for new employees the program has business loans up to $500,000 and lines of credit up to one $150,000. And what we are also doing is through channels like this podcast, we are looking to share more information so that sellers can make that choice based on their specific need. And we make sure we bring products to meet each and every seller's need.
Griff: If I'm in the middle of the application process and I'm unsure, does the white glove touch to the process actually helped me? Will somebody help me figure it out then?
Lee: Yes. For sure. There is a toll free number if you want to call us and ask questions, not a problem at all.
Griff: So I'm looking forward to that 6.99% rate, but what are the rates that you charge now for eBay Seller Capital Program?
Devesh: The program currently offers rates from 9.9, 9% up to a max of 28.99%. And remember there's no origination fee, no application fee for that process. And as you mentioned, with the launch of a new bank partner coming very soon, we will have rates starting at 6.99% as well.
Griff: And as well, you have to be competitive in this business if you're an eBay seller. And that's also true if you're a FinTech, because there's a lot of other financing options out there in the marketplace. All though, I've got to tell you, I personally, I'm not experienced with a lot of them, but I hear from sellers. How does eBay Seller Capital differ from other financing options that eBay sellers might be looking for?
Lee: We find that businesses typically look to three main sources of financing for their business when they want to buy inventory or grow it. From credit cards, sometimes even their personal credit cards, bank loans, and other non traditional loans as well too, such as, you know, factoring.
Griff: Loans from your family.
Lee: And loans from your family as well too. How we're different from that process is first of all, credit impact. Most solutions will impact your personal credit when you apply. Again, our program does not impact personal credit to apply and receive the loan. We do understand our loans are used for business purposes. So therefore we don't impact your personal credit. On the repayment side, for working capital loans, we offer a single fixed fee with no interest. And then for business loans, we offer up to 60 months to repay. Again, with that 60 months, five years what this means is that it is a lower more affordable payment and the business can keep more cashflow for themselves on a month to month basis to manage their business as well too. And then a big piece of course of financing is periodic interest. Our business term loans have a transparent and fixed interest rate. And unlike credit cards, we do not charge interest on interest, right? Oftentimes what people will see on their credit card statements is that if they don't pay off the end of month bill on a credit card the interest for that month, they will get charged interest on top of that interest. We don't do that here at Lending Point. And then fees, no hidden fees. As Dev mentioned before, we're working closely with the eBay program to make this program fee free, no origination, no application, no early payback, no annual fees and no late fees as well too.
Griff: You know, you mentioned funding your business to a credit card. Lots of credit cards have things like annual fees. They charge interest on interest. It could be really difficult to figure it out and you may want to get out of that particular loan. If I'm a seller that has a loan, an existing loan or a credit card where I don't think I'm getting a great deal. Can I refinance that with eBay Seller Capital?
Lee: Yes for sure. So you can definitely use our loan to refinance other business loans and you can actually save your money. Once you receive the loan proceeds, simply pay off the other business loans and consolidate all your business financing needs onto this program for one easy payment.
Devesh: At eBay, we understand many sellers today have previously available financing from other lenders. And that's why it was important to give that option. And we know that with this program, we can offer better and potentially lower cost alternatives to our sellers. Like the 6.99% rate that we are coming up with soon.
Griff: What if I already have a lone with you or with anyone else and I'm not looking to pay it off, but I just need some more capital. If I'm a seller with an existing loan, can I get access to more capital for my business through eBay seller capital?
Lee: Yes, our refinancing program is available today for sellers who have a strong payment history with us. They may have the opportunity to opportunity to really take advantage of an offer to refinance their existing loan with us. And we actually have sellers doing that today already. And what this will do is it provides them more funding to run and grow their business, right? So let's say you borrow, you know, $10,000 and we've paid off a third of it. And now you want to up the amount of capital to run your business. We definitely have that program available for you.
Griff: How do interested sellers apply for eBay Seller Capital?
Devesh: There are a variety of ways for start, you can go to ebay.com/sellercapital and look at the various options of the different products. And then click on apply now and start the application. What you can also do is you can go to Seller Hub and under Seller Tools. There is an option for eBay Seller Capital, click on it, and that will take you to the landing page. We also send emails and other marketing messages to different sellers. As you come across that, and you have a need simply click on that email, and that will take you to these same landing pages where you can start your application.
Griff: Well, this is a lot of information to digest, but I'm going to go check it out myself. I may not be ready to take a loan from my own eBay seller business right now, but who knows in the future. And if you're a seller on eBay and you feel like the only thing hindering your growth right now is that you really could use some help in the way of capital. This could be a great option for you. Dev, Lee, thank you both for helping us out today. I really appreciate it.
Devesh: Thank you.
Lee: Thank you for inviting us back to the program.
Griff: We've been conversing with Devesh Verma, Head of Seller Capital in North America eBay and Lee Chow, Executive Vice President For Product at Lending Point. And we've been talking about eBay's new seller loan program called eBay Seller Capital. We'll put the links to eBay Seller Capital as we always do in the transcript for episode 168.
Griff: Brian, last week I sold something and I ended up having a little bit of a skirmish with a buyer. It was kind of shocking.
Brian: Did they not like the item that you sent them?
Griff: No, they hated it.
Brian: You sent them an item, didn't you?
Griff: I did. But it was worse than that. They told me I was a crook and I was a fraud because I tampered with it.
Brian: What's happened to you?
Griff: I've become desperate. ( laughter).
Brian: Tell me what happened.
Griff: Well, I won't give you any details, cause I don't think it's fair to the buyer. I don't hate the buyer. I just thought this is an unusual situation. I wasn't expecting it, but while it was happening, I kept thinking, okay, put on your eBay Podcast hat, your eBay Griff hat. How would you handle this? And I gotta tell you it's not easy being called a crook. I think I handled it pretty well, but when it was all over, I said, I wonder if this might be a subject we should talk about. So I called a few sellers and they agreed to come onto the podcast and talk about how they'd handled, and I'm calling them difficult customer situations so that we're not focusing on a difficult customer. And joining us for the first of our sellers is our good friend from north of the border. Craig Dawson. Hey Craig.
Craig: Hello Griff.
Brian: Griff The Crook.
Griff: No, no, please. Let's not focus on that. It's too much for me. Really, I'll break out in a sweat.
Craig: But we are adding a T to your name now. It is Griff-T.
Griff: Oh, that's good. Oh no. This is gonna stick. Thanks Craig. (laughter) Anyway, I know from previous conversations that you have had a few difficult situations with customers and I wondered how you handled them. You said you might be willing to talk and give some advice about this.
Craig: Oh sure. I will actually tell you when that happened literally 20 minutes ago. I had an item listed on eBay and I actually originally was selling it with free shipping. I put in the title that I had this item with free shipping. Well, it's been a year and I wanted to get rid of a couple of them. I still had some in stock before Christmas so I lowered the price and I added shipping, but I forgot to actually take free shipping off the title.
Griff: Ohhh.
Craig: So it said, here's this item with free shipping. It sold last night and I saw this morning when I woke up, I was like, oh, oh, it's free shipping. Why is there, why did they pay so much? And I realized that, oh geez, it says it in the title, but they got charged shipping cause I don't offer it anymore. So I sent this person a message and said, I'm terribly, sorry, this is my fault. Is it okay if I refund you the shipping and they just responded with no, you're not refunding me the shipping, I'm fine paying it. So tell me when you hear that kind of story. Never.
Brian: I wonder if it was a repeat buyer. Someone who has had good experiences with you in the past.
Craig: I don't know if it's a repeat buyer. They didn't use a coupon of mine, but I don't know, but it's still just the idea that somebody would actually, I'm offering them the shipping, my mistake as a seller. And they went, no, no that's okay, I understand. Maybe they're a seller. Maybe they've done the same mistake, but so there's thousands of amazing millions of great transactions. And actually, we probably can count on both hands how many difficult customer situations we've had. We've had a couple actually though in the past few months and they're all sort of different. So one of them I'm going to tell you about was a customer that we had back in October and they actually bought a Christmas item. But the problem they had was they did not update their address in eBay and they moved. Now, they moved 16 minutes away from where they were and their address was registered as a hotel. So I guess they were staying in a hotel part-time until they could find a place to live, but they didn't update their address in eBay. Well, they complained, they sent me a message and said, where's my package?. And I said, well, your package was delivered. And they said, oh, that's a hotel. I don't live there. But that's your address in eBay. And they said, well, you need to contact the hotel and you need to get the package back or refund my money. And I said, well, and again, I think the key thing that I would say with any of these kinds of things, anytime you have a difficult situation, number one. Before I go into any more of these, You've got your phone on. Answer anything within the first 12 hours after you get it. When you get up in the morning, if you see something in there, that's a return request or anything like that, the first thing you do is send them a quick message. It doesn't have to be detailed. It can be like a very simple sorry, let me look into this and I'll get back to you and then follow up with it. But don't make the customer wait, cause you as a customer, think if you flip the hat. If you were the buyer and nobody responded for you for 48 hours, you'd start getting more and more mad. So that's my first thing is to immediately respond to them. I did respond and this actually went back for a couple of days and I looked up the hotel. The hotel literally was 15 minutes from where this person lived.
Griff: They could just drive and get it!
Craig: Exactly. And I said, I haven't got it returned. It's been accepted. It's probably sitting waiting for you at the hotel. You lived there. Nothing for another 10 days then I don't know if you saw my last message, but I still haven't got this item and I don't live there. It's like, well, yes, if you read through what I sent you the last time, I suggested that maybe you go by the hotel to check. Another week and a half later, where's my package? I want a refund. You're trying to rip me off. And I just literally said, I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. Unless I have a return receipt coming from the hotel. If it was delivered and accepted by USPS, it is at that space. If someone stole it from you there, that is not my issue. I'm terribly, sorry. You'll have to file with eBay. But I knew from a seller's perspective, I'm covered. I have USPS tracking fully delivered to this place. And that eBay would cover me as a buyer or as a seller in this case. But that was one where it's like every week or 10 days, I was getting another sort of aggressive why haven't you gone to this hotel, that's 10 minutes from where I live?
Griff: Because I have a house to live in. I'm not moving.
Craig: Like, yeah. I was like, where are you? It's like, you're like 10 minutes away in the south shore of Jersey or something like that. And I'm like in Canada, I'm going to just drive. Like, I don't know. So sometimes it's just trying to re-explain without getting into as my husband, Rick, when he does a response, he writes like he's writing an explanation for the government on how to do something. It's like 18 pages long. And at the end of it, I go, what was this email about? Try to be succinct, but try to be very factual. Try to step out of it, reread it before you send it, things like that in your messages. So that was one that was a weird sort of difficult customer situation. But was one, I couldn't control.
Griff: Have you ever lost your cool?
Craig: Every one of them, I lose my cool. I just don't type it to the person.
Griff: Yeah. I said a few choice things to Rob at dinner that night about it while we were watching TV, I said, oh, you won't believe. And I let loose, but it's stuff that I would never, ever put into an email.
Craig: This was like a $200 so I can understand why they were like, oh my God, where is this? Why didn't I get it? And it's like, well again. And actually when we looked even four and a half weeks later, they had still not updated their address in eBay. So I even said to them, you better update your address before you buy anything else. Like, here's one of the ones that I literally turned to Rick and said, what the F is going on with this person's brain? We sell everything under the sun. So we’re random. We are thrifters and resells so we search at every place we can from garage sales to estate sales, to other online auctions, you name it. And I happened to find a bag full of doll eyeballs. Yes, doll replacement doll eyes with eyelashes on them. So if you made dolls, you could make them have eyes. I got this whole bag of like 50 pairs of eyeballs for like $4 and I was selling them for $10 each. This person got a pair and then said, this doesn't fit my doll. I said, oh, I'm terribly sorry. I tell you what, just throw them out. Here's a full refund because I didn't want to pay for shipping back. Cause I offer free shipping. So it was free shipping down to them. And free shipping back to me would have been a waste of time. So I give them their money back. And this was the, what the hell moment. I got neutral feedback from them saying something to the degree of, I bought the wrong size eyeballs and he couldn't measure the correct size for my doll. I couldn't far, far away from them measure that person's doll eyeballs.
Griff: Did you respond?
Craig: No.
Griff: Yeah. I don't think I would have either. It speaks for itself.
Brian: I think buyers who read that would understand.
Craig: I actually, I'm trying to think. I might've responded with, unfortunately we had only one size available, like something like that, but again, I didn't get emotional in that side of thing,
Brian: Smart not to get emotional. The other thing that I've done is I've typed messages, but I've not put anything in the to because I don't want to inadvertently send. Cause then I get the feeling out of writing the email, but then I actually don't send it.
Griff: I used to do that too, but then I thought that was risky. So now I just locked myself in the bathroom and scream at the mirror and it works!
Craig: Well, Like, what I just said, Rick and I have that. One of our worst ones was a couple of years ago actually before COVID and this was one of those ones and I think a lot of sellers actually have this happen to them. You start getting sort of this little feeling because the questions before the purchase are just starting to get either very weird. It's like, okay, sorry, this is not, that's a different kink channel on YouTube. This is not where you are right now. Or they just start asking things. And it just seems to be like pushy or so this one person actually came down. This was actually a singing Christmas tree that I had. It's a Douglas fir singing Christmas tree or animatronic trees. They sell really well on eBay. And I had one that I was selling and this person, it was brand new. Still had it wrapped, never touched anything like that. And this person sent me offer and then a message with another offer and didn't send offers, offers, but kept sending me messages to lower the price. And some of them came within three or four minutes of each other, like, would you take 100? Would you take 90? Would you take?.. And then at one point it was like, what'd you take 95? And I'm like, what does he do? I was literally saying, and then on top of that, there were, does this work, are you sure that it works? Are you sure that it's new? Are you sure that it's never been used before? Have you tested it? And I'm answering all of these questions and then out of the blue it sells! I'm like, oh, thank God. I don't have to deal with that person, it sold for full price to that person. And I was like, oh God. This was like way under the, like way over the price you've been offering. And I was like, okay, well, the next thing was a message saying, so I better have this by Saturday. This was Wednesday. And I was like, okay, first of all, you didn't choose expedited shipping. hat's like courier overnight, practically because it's Wednesday night. You want something by Saturday. There's no way I can get it to you from Thursday to Friday in time. And he just started arguing with me in messages that I should be able to do this and he's bought it. I actually ended up saying, I'm sorry, I'm canceling this order because you're demanding things from me that I can't fulfill as a seller. And I never promised you that I would fulfill them. And I canceled by using problem with address because that really was what it was. It was problem with trying to do an expedited address. And I got a negative feedback from him and I didn't follow up with eBay, which I did talk to someone about a year later. And they said, you should have, because you would have had that specific one removed. But yeah, his negative feedback was right on that cusp of calling me like a liar and a cheat and trying to rip him off. The one thing I always say is if you do have negative feedback or anything like that, the one thing you should not do is do not respond to it before you actually have spoken to eBay. If you want to have it challenged or anything like that. Cause that's the one thing, if you've responded to it, then you've responded. So eBay doesn't really need to handle the fact that you've already given a response. Like don't fight it there. And I actually did respond to it somewhat nicely. I don't remember. It was my one negative too for like, that's the only thing that bugs me. It sat there for 365 days. I kept saying there's one negative, one negative. And it kept moving and moving and moving.
Brian: The one part of that, that story though, that is interesting. Like sellers worry so much about getting that negative and you know, it clearly didn't have an impact on your sales and your perspective on selling on eBay and all the rest of it is good.
Craig: Not at all. In fact, in any case, if I do get, which I rarely do, luckily enough knock would have a negative. I've only had I think one as well in the past year past that is my efforts go to selling some more stuff. So that, that negative drops further down on the list. If somebody happens to look at my feedback and it doesn't show up as the number one thing, I just want to sell five or six others. And then if someone looks immediately at my feedback, the first thing they're going to see is amazing response, amazing packaging, exactly as described, would buy from this guy again, like all that sort of stuff. And that one buried in there in 6,000 plus feedbacks that says he's a liar and a cheat. And I think Griff is teaching him how to sell. (laughter)
Craig: I resemble that remark! (laughter) Well, Craig, it's always a pleasure, but I want to thank you again. You really helped make the podcast lively. I really appreciate that. Great advice too. And great stories.
Griff: No problem. Thanks so much for having me. I'm always, always there for chit chatting around on eBay. My favorite Sally had a great weekend.
Craig: Thank you so much and happy Holidays!
Griff: Our best to Rick as well.
Craig: Take care.
Griff: Well, that was great. Well, now I think it's time now to talk to Shari Smith. Hi Sherry. How are you?
Shari: Hi friend!
Griff: You agreed to talk to us about a topic that I found interesting. And I already explained to Craig who we just spoke to, what the situation was basically I had a buyer that just called me a crook. So they found me out. It's really terrible.
Shari: Terrible, but it took a while though it took years well.
Griff: I thought to myself, I'm going to talk to some of our sellers and find out how they handle difficult customer situations. So have you had difficult customer situations in the past?
Shari: Yes, I have. You know, I haven't had one for a long time.
Griff: Oh that is good.
Shari: Yes. It really is good because I mean, situations come up like an international buyer recently didn't get his package. The tracking just stopped showing any information as of like two weeks prior to his message, I added the tracking, but then I called eBay to find out what I should do because he's being reasonable. I mean, he's just asking what's going on. And just because I have tracking, he hasn't received the package. I let him know that I had talked to eBay and that I can file a claim with eBay Standard International Delivery after a certain period of time. Because I think it's 30 days. I told him that I put it in my calendar to file a claim on the day that I could. And he contacted me a couple of days before that and wanted to know what was going on. And I said, it is okay if you open a request because I'm also following up on this because I didn't want his request time to expire. Now this is a very reasonable person. Who's not calling me names or anything. And what turned out is he never did get the package. And when I filed the claim, I got reimbursed pretty quickly by eBay Standard International Delivery. And I refunded him. So that's how that all went down. Of course, it's all about communication/ Occasionally, on a rare occasion, you get a buyer that's calling me names like I'm committing fraud and...
Brian: or like crook.
Griff: Yeah, Crook is a word that came up earlier today.
Shari: Yes, And what's really great about eBay is that the communication is with, you know, your hands and not your mouth. I can just contain myself, think about what I want to type and, you know, answer them as if they haven't called me a crook or a fraud. That case, the person said the garment smelled like smoke. So I don't smoke. I do sell on consignment. I didn't notice it smelled like smoke. And I probably really would have. I said, I'm so sorry. You know, I sell on consignment, but I don't sell anything that smells like smoke, but I'm really sorry that it did. Um, if you open a return with eBay, I have free returns, it will issue you a return label, prepaid return label, and I'll issue you a refund upon receipt. And she said, I can't even bring it in my house. It's going to make me sick. And I can't believe that you're making me, you know, have to go near it or send it back. And I said, I'm really sorry. This is, of course after I think about things and try to say things in the nicest way possible, but I will issue you a refund and I'll pay return shipping. I don't know if you can get your post carrier to pick it up at your house so you don't have to touch it. You know, maybe you could just apply the label and stick it on the, on the porch. So the answer to how I handle buyer conflicts is to really, and not to patronize them either, but to really say, well, I'm so sorry. I'll always offer a refund upon return and I have free returns. Okay. So I had a guy who bought 60 pound speakers from me and each speaker was 60 pounds. Oh my gosh, they were beasts. And they cost like $75 each to ship them to him. And he said that the tweeter was damaged. And so, yeah, it just wouldn't tweet. And um, he sent me pictures now, meanwhile one's okay. And for me to pay return, shipping is going to cost me $150. So I asked for pictures of the damage, which was really hard to discern in a picture. It was really hard to make out that it was damaged and the condition of the box and pictures of the box. And I submitted a claim to FedEx and they were not responding for a long time. And it's kind of impossible to contact them and talk to someone in claims. I kind of made that my life's goal. And I talked to people that I said, will you please convey this to your claims department? Because of the notes that they put was that there was no visible damage on the box. And I said, oh, then they're probably not going to honor this. I said, please send them this picture. There is a hole. You can see it. And it's a damage on the outside of the box. Well, FedEx ended up honoring the claim after this whole shenanigans and my buyer, I refunded in full and said to keep them or, or whatever you wanted to do that worked out. I think the key is just kind of to take a breath and chip away at it sometimes.
Griff: Well, Shari, this has been great. I'm glad you agreed to talk to us.
Shari: Thank you so much.
Brian: Have a wonderful weekend, Shari.
Shari: Okay. Thank you. Bye guys.
Griff: Well, that was great. I haven't talked to Sherry since she was here at one of our new employee orientations. A long time ago, two plus years ago.
Brian: Since you've spoken to her? Oh wow.
Griff: Our next seller is a, another seller from Colorado. Please welcome a regular guest and contributor to the podcast has a podcast of our own with our ex colleague Doug Smith. It's the seller community or community, right Liz? What is it called? Sorry.
Brian: Well, we say what? Let's welcome, Liz.O'Kane.
Griff: Okay, well let's welcome Liz. O'Kane. Hi, Liz. Hi.
Liz: Thank you for having me back.
Griff: Tell us the real name of your podcast. I am sorry. I messed it up.
Liz: I am cohost of The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly.
Griff: I want to thank you for joining us today or agreeing to join us. This is a fun topic for sellers. I think as I told you earlier, I had my own situation this week. I want to find out how you handle difficult customer situations. And if you've had one recently?
Liz: Oh goodness. If you've been a seller for any more than about three months, you have probably faced something that may seem difficult to you. You know, I think the last five years I tend to not buy into difficult buyers.
Griff: What do you mean not buy into?
Liz: So what I tend to do is, I can find a situation where a buyer can be demanding or ugly or mean or upset, which in turn as a seller, you know, we automatically, oh my gosh, this is the end of the world. This is a horrible, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. And that could be. I've learned over the years to kind of not take it personally, treating my business more like a business. And what I found with difficult situations or a buyer that is upset, I have found that when I come across buyers that are not happy with their purchase, whether it's justified or not, it is easier for me to say you're right, send it back. I'm sorry about that. Let's take care of it for you. That happens. And it works to my favor in almost all situations now. I found that when I do that, I'm able to save myself time and able to save myself a little bit of sanity. For example, I can think back of a time when I probably didn't handle situations the right way.
Griff: Oh let's talk about those.
Liz: I can't think of the specific scenario, but I remember it was Christmas probably five years ago, six years ago. Somebody purchased something and they thought they were getting two of the item, which blew my mind because it was a picture of one item. It says, you will receive one item. This is a single item. It was a pillow, sham. Not a pair, just one. And they were so upset and they emailed me or they message me via eBay Messenger. About 10 times on Christmas Eve. This is ridiculous. You’re crazy. I mean, I can't remember the exact, but I remember Christmas Eve going, this is nuts. And I found myself getting worked up. I'm like, this is Christmas Eve, over a $30 pillow sham. Come on. You know? But at the time it upset me. It was Christmas time. It wasn't about the money. It was about this listing is totally clear. I waited, emailed them the next day and we went back and forth. I'm like, no, it's one, no, it's this. It all worked out in the end. I believe the buyers sent it back. They got their money back hindsight, fast forward, five years later, if that were to happen today, I'd be like, you're right. Send it back.
Griff: Just cut right to the chase.
Liz: Right? If it were to happen, Christmas Eve. So sorry about that. Have a great evening. Send it back when you get a chance. What I found is dealing with these difficult situations, it's really not worth my effort to do the back and forth. I tend to sometimes use the phrase that I've heard from other people is, what lives rent-free in your head? And sometimes when we have difficult buyers, we let them live rent-free in our head when we could be making money with that brain space. That's the way I see it.
Griff: Don't let them squat in your brain.
Liz: No and especially on Christmas Eve.
Griff: Then you will never get rid of them.
Liz: Exactly. Now don't get me wrong. I am human. I'm not going to go back and forth with a customer nowadays. What I can do is I have a great group of reseller friends, screenshot it, send it to, can you believe this? This is ridiculous. You vent, you laugh about it and you just move on.
Brian: It is kind of that catharsis that you get by sending it to everybody else.
Griff: Look what this person did call me a crook. I don't believe it.
Liz: Right. You know? And then there's that human element of it to where there's some times it does upset you, you think of a witty response or something, a response to a totally unreasonable message that you may receive. But again, at the end of the day, you don't send it. I have found when I made that switch to be from Liz, the person selling something on eBay to Colorado Reworn the business and treated it those two different ways. It's really helped me again, not let that transaction or that customer live rent free in my head. And I can just move on.
Griff: To the next transaction.
Liz: Absolutely. Is it going to cost me a couple of dollars? Yes. How many of these do I actually deal with the year? Maybe one or two?
Griff: That's a good point. I've only had one in so long. I feel better already. That's why I did this segment really was just to get therapy for my friends. I felt so bad that night. I looked at my dogs and I said, you guys might want to sleep in the other room. I don't think you want to sleep with a crook.
Liz: You know and that's the thing, we're human. And we joke about it and, and we look at it. But at the end of the day, it really is about customer service. I've had customers come at me. I can think of one. I sent a customer, a pair of shorts and they were First Class. They arrived. I mean, it looked like the UPS truck drove over. It backed up, drove over it again. It was just one of those crazy things that happened with this package. He was absolutely upset. Sent me a two paragraph novel of why I was a horrible seller and I should have triple bagged it and I should have put it in a box. So it was First Class. It wasn't a high value item. I didn't have it insured. And at the end of the day, I'm responsible for getting that person the item, did it stink? Was I out that money? Yeah. I happened to have a replacement, same exact item instead of arguing back, like I know how to package my items. I've been doing this for 20 years. You don't know what you're talking about. It's not my fault the UPS driver ran it over. You're ridiculous. No. Would you like another pair? Would you like a refund? He's like, well, I mean, it wasn't really your fault, you know, maybe like a 50% refund and I could maybe wash them? I was like, don't worry about it. I'll just send you a new pair. Keep both. And in my mind it wasn't a huge loss and I sold many variations of this item. These pair of shorts in my mind, he might be happy enough to come back when he wants another pair.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. He had a good experience ultimately, right.
Griff: Where as you called him on the carpet and even insinuated that he was an idiot. He might not come back unless he has a glutton for punishment, kind of like me.
Brian: And you move much more quickly on to helping another customer who might have an issue or listing another item or sourcing inventory. The number of times I've had conversations with sellers who don't have your perspective. And I think, man, it's, been three months and it's still taking up time and energy. Since they're talking to me about it.
Griff: They'd given this difficult situation, headspace rent-free.
Liz: Yes. I may have had that conversation with you six years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, maybe before I kind of changed my way of thinking, you know, am I going to let this get to me? Or am I going to move on? Do some of these returns hurt and sting and affect your bottom line? Yes they can. And I get that. And every situation is different. I'm talking about a pillow sham from five years ago because I really can't think of a bad experience.
Griff: It's not that you've been on this for all these years.
Liz: Right. I'm sitting here trying to think.
Griff: Arrgh...Slowly I turned, step by step!
Brian: Will that be an episode, the pillow sham?
Griff: I'll tell you what, I'll leave that to you and Doug.
Liz: That was an ongoing joke between me and my friends for awhile. It was the sham.
Griff: Which is another word for, crook right? Yeah. There you go.
Liz: So that kind of played in well, but I may have had instances since then, but I don't let it get to me like I did then, because I spent three days dealing with this over the holidays when I could have just been here's your money, bye. And gotten on with listing 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 more things and just ending it.
Griff: Well, Liz, this has been excellent therapy for me. And hope it proves to be interesting to our sellers. Continued success with the podcast, by the way, tell people where they can find it.
Liz: Yes, you can find the seller community podcast anywhere you stream podcasts, Apple, Spotify, and more. We hope you'll tune in and listen, we talk about all things reselling.
Griff: And we'll put a link to the podcast in our series of links that we do every episode.
Brian: And I, and I just realized, you know, we should've been a little bit more observant. We wouldn't have had to try and guess the name of the podcast earlier because it's actually on her sweatshirt.
Griff: Oh, there it is. We are idiots.
Liz: I am always advertising.
Griff: You know, I fall back on the fact that I'm older now, just my Swiss cheese brain.
Liz: I'm hiding behind the microphone .
Griff: Hiding behind it. That's great. Well, Liz, thank you so much our best to Doug and continued success. And thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. It's been helpful. I think for all of us, myself included.
Liz: Thank you, Griff and thank you Brian.
Brian: Do we have questions?
Griff: Well, Brian, normally we do cause that's, this is the spot where we say you got questions, we got answers, but we're saving all of the questions that we have for the next episode, because there's no time this week. We really, I didn't really think about it and think about how having three sellers on might take up a lot of time. And a lot of what our sellers said. I don't want to edit out super valuable. It may be the first show in a while that's over an hour.
Brian: So that's a pretty full show for this week. Yeah. So then next week we'll have some questions. And in the meantime, if you have a question about selling on eBay or running a business, call us at (888) 723-4630.
Griff: Let me repeat that. (888) 723-4630. Call that hotline anytime of the day, any day of the week, just leave a question or comment on the voice line. And we might just put your question on the air, or if you're interested, leave a message saying as much we might put you on the air as a guest, we can have you on live.
Brian: What, is that you? You're not a call on the phone person.
Griff: I'm not.
Brian: No problem for you. You can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: Now it's time for your daily Podcast To Do List. Before we sign off...
Brian: Check the Announcement Board for up-to-date Seller News.
Griff: A little extra capital, my boost your business. You know what I mean? One thing I could think you could invest in is the thermal printer so there is always that.
Brian: There is always that. Check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced in the episode.
Griff: We would like again, to thank our guests this week, Devesh Verma Head Of Seller Capital North America and Lee Chow Executive Vice President For Product at Lending Point.
Brian: And eBay sellers, Liz O' Kane, Shari Smith, and Craig Dawson.
Griff: eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
This week we learn more about the new eBay finance program called eBay Seller Capital and Griff and Brian have a conversation with eBay sellers Craig Dawson, Shari Smith and Liz O’Kane about how they handle difficult customer situations.
You got questions? Call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.
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